Bringing It Back - Mario Style

This game returns to the original 2D Super Mario Brothers style game while adding a little extra 3D mode – only if you have Mario selected.

In this new adventure, you get to switch between Mario, Luigi, Peach and Bowser to try and stop Count Bleck from destroying all worlds. This is the only reason that Bowser actually wants to help Mario, otherwise he wouldn’t have a land to his own or a castle full of minions to order around.

Aside from flipping into 3D mode, you acquire pixi’s along the way to help you. Pixi’s have different powers, such as Boomer, a pixi who turns into a bomb and blows up to hurt enemies. Others help you pick up items and throw them, enable you to flip sideways and become paper thin, turn into a hammer and bash things, shrink you down into a tiny size, and even carry you over spikes.

Each character has a power as well. Mario can flip into 3D mode, Peach can jump and use her umbrella to float long distances, Luigi can jump super high and Bowser can blow fire. Put all of these forces together and you are ready to take on Count Bleck and his minions.

This returns to the standard levels or worlds with 8 worlds, each having 4 levels, just like the original Super Mario Brothers game.

The main point of the game is to find the Pure Hearts necessary to take away Bleck’s powers and give you the upper hand to defeat him. After you find all 8 pure hearts, you have to place each one into a heart pillar found in your ‘base’ city of Flipside – and its alter ego, Flopside. Sometimes, the hardest part of the game is searching through the towns to find the heart pillars. (The difficulty level is definitely not very high as this game is aimed for the younger ages.)

Since you have to search for heart pillars, you can take your time exploring the town. You can meet people, buy items such as health boosts and special attack items, visit a fortune teller to help you find your way, and even visit an arcade to play mini games.

I think I spent a total of 26 hours playing this game. It took me a good portion of the time just trying to find heart pillars. All in all, it was a pretty fun game that took me back to being a 5-year-old playing the original Mario. Simply classic.

-Focko

Civilization Revolution

Having been a fan of the Civilization series on the computer for a long time, I was very excited to try it out for the PS3.

They did make the size of the map in the console version a lot smaller than the computer, which leads to somewhat faster game play. I believe this to be a very smart decision, because playing strategy games is a lot different on a console than on a computer. I have no problem saving my game on a computer and plugging away at it every now and then. However, when you start having to use the TV, you look more for fast paced action. This is especially true if you have roommates (or live with significant others), because if you play a strategy game, and it takes an extended period of time, they will let you know, because now you are blocking off time they could be using watching their favorite show, or watching a movie (plus its not that fun for others to watch you play). So by shrinking the worlds, and not having to worry about all the small things like: building roads one square at a time, or having to manually cut down trees and irrigate field, really makes this game more action oriented.

Playing online with friends is also fun, I have a couple buddies that have the game and we tried it out online, and it was pretty fun. A couple challenging things, is that because the worlds are smaller, it's harder to move units around with allies because they tend to bottleneck near rivers and canyons.

The only other thing that I found annoying, is the combination of your advisers and leaders of other civilizations. They feel that it is necessary to say the same things over and over and over. If you are at war with another civilization, they will say something like "Your civilization is no match to ours, prepare to be destroyed". Ok, so maybe not those exact words, but they will always say something at the beginning of the turn to remind you that they don't like you. Advisers will almost always say the same thing, for some reason my science advisor said that every technology was a military technology.....not sure how pottery could be used in battle I guess.

All in all, I felt it was a very fun game, I am glad that I was able to rent it instead of buy it, because it did not take long for me to figure out the game, and for it to get repetitive. Plus you can only build 1 nuclear missile!!! Where's the fun in nuking someone only once?!

-Pfieffer

GameFly and Wii Games…

Well, Pfieffer and I have been having some bad luck lately with the games we have been getting. Evidently, GameFly has their own priority system set up within the games you put on your wanted list. You will get the highest priority game on your list…from the nearest distributor. That means, if you put a game at the top of the list and it says it has a short wait, it will send you the next available game on your list from the NEAREST DISTRIBUTOR. This interesting little rule ended in us receiving 4 Wii games in a row from no higher than 6th on the list of the games on our wanted list. So, we removed ALL Wii games from the list, and Pfieffer finally received a PS3 game.

Supposedly, this is to help you receive a game on your list in the shortest amount of time. They consider it better service. But for us, it was not better service, it was convenience for GameFly at the customer’s expense. Better service would have been giving us the next game on our list, not the next game from the closest distributor.

Just something to watch out for when signing up for GameFly.

A New Galaxy for Mario

Yes, I took a flyer on a game based off the old classic. You know what? This game didn’t disappoint. Super Mario Galaxy was fun for everyone who played it at my apartment and those who played it at Pfieffer’s house (at least I didn’t hear him complain any – I only heard his fiancé complain that I took the game and hadn’t given it back yet for her to play it).

Basically, in terms of hit versus flop, Mario is a can’t miss. Personally, I haven’t run into a Mario game that really sucked. In fact, I just recently bought the Mario Kart for the Wii. (post to come in the future)

The feud between Bowser and Mario continues in space with different galaxy’s to travel to and fight for the rescue of Princess Peach. Each galaxy is similar to the different worlds of Super Mario 3 but with the new age 3D Mario as in Super Mario World 64. The best and most unique part of this game by far is the ability to run around the world – a small sphere with gravitational pull in outer-space. I don’t think I can accurately describe this without taking a lot of the prestige out of it.

You travel by star cannons that launch you to the galaxy/planet/world where you go through a standard Mario type level. Afterwards you get a star, which magically transports you back to the starship where you call home until you save Peach and the Universe. There are different observatories that you unlock as you go, meaning you can use different star cannons to go to different galaxies to retrieve stars. The more stars you get, the closer you get to powering-up the starship to travel to the center of the universe to rescue Peach.

The game may seem to be getting long after you collect the 30th star, but it definitely isn’t a game you can pass in just single-digit hours of game play, making it worth a 50 dollar purchase – or just use GameFly and send it back when you are done, with no late fee, just like Pfieffer and I did.

I recommend this game if you liked Mario for the 64. It adds a little spunk to the classic game. Although I never looked into it, there seemed to be the possibility of co-op play – maybe something for you to look into if you check out the game.

- Focko

If you've played one, you've played them all...

Next game up on the list, is NBA Ballers: Chosen One. I am a fan of the old NBA Jam, and NBA Street games, so it drove me to wanting to rent this game and check it out. After playing a couple quick games and getting used to the controls, I feel the need to start the "Story Mode" of the game.

Starting out is a type of NBA Inside Stuff TV set, where some guy sets up the whole "Chosen One" theme. He gives brief talks about absolutely nothing before different chapters of the game. The idea is that you start off as a nobody, and look to build up street cred, and to hopefully make it into the NBA. So I started off playing a variety of different chanllenges in the different areas of the story mode. There are some interesting games that vary from 1-on-1, 2-on-2, or even 3-on-3 games, that have unique rules (slam dunks only, no fouls, etc.). This is fun at first, but after playing it for awhile, gets really boring and monotanous.

They really make the point that NBA players are like greek Gods walking around everyone else. Every time when playing on a new court, there is a huge entrance video of that courts star NBA player (usually the boss of that level). Whenever they come out to the court, the crowd goes nuts, and it shows them at like 80 different angle to make sure you know who the crowd is reacting too. I find it funny that the crowd always makes a big deal about who it is, regardless of who is in the crowd. Example, Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant, and Dwight Howard are in the crowd hanging out, then Joe Johnson makes an entrance via the helicopter pad right outside, and comes to the court with a posse and everyone goes nuts.

I know that is a minor detail, and it doesn't affect the gameplay, it just adds to the feeling that the game really doesn't have a "storyline" at all. Your character never talks, nobody ever talks to him, nothing happens off the court. This makes it prety hard to develop any time of "story", it's just pointless games, one after the other. So if you like these types of NBA Jame type games, I would reccomend renting this, definately not buying it.

A Mastery of FPS Co-op Campaigning

Army of Two happens to be one of the better two player First-Person Shooter games I have ever played in campaign mode (not even going to compare it to Halo or Counter-Strike multiplayer games). For this post’s purpose we are sticking to storyline mode only.

Why is this one of the best? Because it makes the game fun by inserting little humor points. An example would be allowing you to go up to your teammate and hit a button to show happiness or aggression. Hit the happiness button and your player my give your teammate a fist bump, jam out on an air guitar or slap hands while saying random phrases like, “I got your back bro” or mouthing random musical noises to go with the ‘guitar’ both characters are playing. Hit the aggression button and your player may smack your teammate on the back of the head, punch him in the gut, etc. while saying random things like, “You’re a F#%@ing dead man!” or “What’s your problem!?”

Even during cut scenes your characters are adding humor to the game. Example: progressing through a mission, both teammates are needed to open certain doors. As one holds the door the other moves through it and in one cut scene, the guy holding the door trips his teammate as he passes through. No dialogue, just watching one player trip the other to the ground adds some random in game humor. Maybe even more-so because the cut-scene makes it look dramatic as if you are about to be ambushed or something. During cut-scenes it is regular for you and your teammate to be arguing, adding another level to the character of the game.

Okay, so you guys are marines at the next level of combat serving for a secret agency within the secret service carrying out missions with no connection to the US. If you die, you aren’t Americans, you are just rogue ops that are carrying out your own agenda. The basis of the game is that your boss is trying to get a bill passed for ‘stealth’ missions to be the new wave of war. No public war announcements, just behind the scenes mayhem to accomplish strategic goals.

You get to buy new weapons after or mid-mission with the money you earn for completing missions. This is a pretty cool feature as you can ‘pimp’ your gun. If appearance doesn’t matter to you, you may not find this as interesting, but still, I think it is worth mentioning as it adds another level to the game.

Cool features include an overkill mode where everything is in slow motion as you blast your enemies and back to back mode in which the same thing happens. Best part, if you shoot a guy in the knee, it flies behind him as gravity brings his upper body down. If you hit him more than once (knee then face) his body reacts as physics say it should. Definitely a high point of the game. You can also go into dual snipe mode to take out two guards by shooting at the same time making it so that the rest of the enemy isn’t alerted to your presence.

So, I got a little bit ahead of myself. The overkill mode I was talking about is pretty sweet, but in order to get to that point you have to acquire a certain level of ‘agro’. This agro is basically the attention of the enemy. If one teammate shoots or sprays cover fire, he gets the enemy’s attention. If he does it long enough, he gets the attention of all of the enemies in the scene and the other player becomes almost transparent. He can stand up in plain sight and not get shot at or just run out into the open and start killing people without getting shot at for a good amount of time – 5 seconds is longer than you think sometimes. If you acquire all the agro, it prompts you to go into overkill mode where your partner is still transparent to the enemy and you can take people out in slow motion while taking minimal damage. A definite highlight of the game.

Overall, the game was pretty sweet, and fun to play with Pfieffer for the 8 hours it took us to pass the game on the lowest difficulty rating. What? We went for fun in this game, not difficulty. If difficult is fun for you, up the difficulty level and I’m sure you’ll have a good time.

-Focko

Game.....or movie?

Being a huge fan of the Metal Gear Solid series, I could not wait to play this game. I started out really liking the game, the graphics were amazing, but somehow through rapid aging, Solid Snake is REALLY OLD! He talks really crackly, moves somewhat slow, and if you stay crouched too long, he starts to moan and pat his own back because it hurts, only thing that's missing is a bottle of Viagra.

The game does start out really fun and really feels like the old Metal Gear games with having to stay hidden and being stealthy. Where the game lost me, is as the storyline progresses, you play less and less. I'm all about the cutscenes, but keep them short or far apart, or just let me play right after them!!

I started playing one night, and in about 2 hours of "playing", I only spent an actual 15-20min of ACTUAL GAMEPLAY. There were soooo many times during the cinematic scenes that I was actually yelling at the TV "I just want to play! Just let me play!". I even started telling friends about how long you actually don't play the game, so they would come over, and sure enough watch this "game" with me for a better part of an hour (again, about 10min of gameplay). I'm not sure if it's just because I'm so good at the game that I just flew past the interactive parts of the movie, I mean, game. As much as I'd like to toot my own horn, I don't think this is the case.

Another pet peave I had with the game, is that everything is dramatic and they overkill on making a point. First I'm going to start off by explaining what I mean when I say everything is dramatic. Whenever there is something new in the game, it always starts off by everyone looking at the camera (so you can't see what it is), and shows ever angle possible, then does a very slow shot of who/what it actually is. Half the time it's nothing special. For example, there is a character that has worn a ski mask the whole game, then towards the end of the game, there is this big cinematic scene because he actually took off his mask, and kept showing everyones face as they looked at him, then music got louder and they showed his face and he look like a NORMAL PERSON, nothing special! The other part that made the cinematic scenes so long, is over emphasizing points. There is a part where the enemy is on a boat, and gets surrounded by the army on boats, over the bridges, and by helcopters. It probably shows the different people setting up and pointing there guns for about 12 minutes.......we get it already!! there are A LOT of people setting up to trap them! I don't need to see soldiers taking out their guns, loading them and pointing them for that long.....OVERKILL.

The game's storyline does get very confusing (have no idea how you would follow along if you haven't played the previous games), and it does go on and on and on, even the ending credits are interrupted for another 20min of storyline (don't worry, no actualy gameplaying). Then at the end of the credits, there is some audio to keep the storyline going even further, it reminds me of the cow in the movie: Me, Myself, and Irene that just wouldn't die! End the game already!

As much as I have complained about this game, the times you actually play the game, it is really fun. Also being a fan of the franchise, I had no choice but to play it all the way through just to see what happens. However, I couldn't have been happier when it was all over. If you are a fan of the series, I suggest playing it because they have more plot turns than any game in history (gets kind of ridiculous), if this is your first time playing a Metal Gear Solid game, you will like the gameplay, but be confused as hell at the plot.

-Pfieffer

Arcade Games Brought Home

That is what it feels like to play Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles on the Wii. Pointing the Wii remote at the screen (or sensor) and seeing your cross-hairs move when you move. Point and shoot.

You have zombies, dogs, apes and even leeches attacking you in the latest released version of this game. But with the Wii, you have the arcade feel of not being able to control where you move to next, ala Area 51. There’s no ducking behind boxes, retracing your steps or taking your time to solve various problems within the game – unless the game is programmed to have you duck or retrace your steps. Leeches fly at you and ‘stick to the screen’ so to speak. If a zombie gets in your face and bites you, blood stains the screen for a second. You pick up ammo, herbs and weapons by putting your cross-hairs on the item and pressing ‘A’. If you like the arcade style game play, this game is for you.

Aside from the different play style than all the other Resident Evil games, this game does provide more detail than I have seen in other versions, example Resident Evil 4. You can shoot out the lights anywhere in the game and it affects the lighting in the room, not just the color where the light was on the wall, ceiling or chandelier. And if you shoot the chandelier, it begins swinging and turning as it would in real life if hit from that angle and swings about as long as you think one would in real life, as well. The graphics in this game are nothing to sneeze at either. Everything remains as life-like as any other cutting-edge video game that is out there.

Personally, I got tired of this game very quickly and didn’t leave it on long enough to see if it had a co-operative story mode. I finished the first level consisting of three sublevels and had a cramp in my hand from the way the game makes you hold the remote and continuously ‘pull the trigger,’ or press the ‘B’ button. Good luck playing for an hour and not experiencing the same thing yourself.

I’m a huge fan of the Resident Evil games, but this one isn’t the same. I guess I’ll just have to wait for Resident Evil 5 to come out and play it on Pfieffer’s PS3.

- Focko

Gaming on a Budget – Age of Empires

It’s time to talk about a game that we found to be a lot of fun for just $10 at your local Evil Empire – err, Wal-Mart.

It is a game of world domination in which you start with a town center and a couple of villagers and build up your civilization with houses, mills, lumber camps, gold and stone mines, barracks, castles and other various buildings for the advancement of culture.

The best part of this game is after you advance through the ages and can build your civilization's unique attacking units such as knights and trebuchets (big freakin’ catapults that destroy enemy walls and buildings). After amassing a decent size army of attack units and fortifying your base with stone walls and guard towers, march your army to the enemy base and wreak havoc among their villagers, town center and defense units.

We have found this game to be at its best when doing a LAN and joining forces against computer opponents. A common task is for us to take our team of 2 cultures against either 3 teams of 2 cultures per team or against 2 teams of 3 cultures per team. (There is an 8 player maximum.)

We urge you to buy this cheap game, set up a LAN with a couple of friends and set out to dominate the world. It is the cheapest game I have ever spent so much time playing – outside of that pet rock I got when I was 3 years old… I definitely suggest Age of Empires over a pet rock if you are old enough to operate a computer.

GTA IV Details - The Taxi Cab Driver

For the past couple months I have been playing the new GTA IV on PS3, and let me say, that game is amazing! The thing that amazes me the most is not the stunning graphics, the storyline, or even the huge map with no loading......it's the attention to detail. I have been playing the game quite a bit since it came out, and I still find new things everytime I play it. The area that I am going to write about is, The Taxi Cab Driver.




The Taxi Cab Driver

What some people may not know, is that if you don't feel like driving across the whole map to get somewhere, you can just hail a cab. I tend to do this for just such a reason, but what I've been finding out that is entertaining, is the cab driver. There are about 3 different types of cab drivers, each with their own personality. First detail is when you enter the car, the dome light comes on, and if someone else is hoping in with you, it will light up when they enter and shut off when they close the door. Next, the taxi cab driver will always turn around and ask you where you want to go. You can then pick from either a spot you picked on the map, or from various areas of interest (bar, comedy club, resteraunt, or even a gentlemen's club). Once you decide where you are going and tell the cab driver, is when the fun starts. Below is a list of different responses I have heard when telling him where you want to go:

• "Okay, don't play with the windows"
• "Nobody knows this town better than me!"
• "I can't wait till I get off work, go home, smoke some hash, and beat up the koochie!"
• "I hope you don't mind, but I just layed some serious gas in here."
• "Sounds good, I'll take the long way."
• "Would you make up your %&*#* mind?!" (when switching locations)

After you are on your way to your destination, you can either switch locations (response from above), or tell the driver to hurry up. When you tell him to hurry up, he will start to drive recklessly, hitting anything and anyone at high speeds, and will follow it up with saying:

• "You don't have to tell him twice!"


• "Now you're speaking my language!"


• "You got it!"

I will still hear new sayings, especially when finding drivers from different areas of the map.

The Taxi Cab Driver is one of the many areas in GTA IV that I have noticed the game developers have put in a lot of work and great detail to make it as realistic and enjoyable as possible.

An Introduction to Pfieffer and Focko

Welcome to the Pfieffer and Focko’s first blog. We aren’t know-it-alls when it comes to video games. We are more like a poor-man’s Video Gamer magazine. We plan to discuss interesting tid-bits about random games for PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and maybe a few PC games as well – neither of us own an Xbox 360, sorry. We may refer to games that apply to multiple platforms even though we will experience them mainly on the systems we have access to.

Our target audience is the average to under-average video gamer that has a substantial/average life to attend to without being able to game-it-up 24/7. We may like to game from after work until the wee hours of the morning from time to time, but realistically, our lives may get in the way of such gaming rampages. This blog will help us keep in touch with that inner child that still memorizes cheat codes (for NES TMNT: Manhattan Project at the start up screen – Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, Start).